The Favourite is second in the box office charts in the U.K. after the first weekend of the year, making a weekend gross of £2.2 million. The film was released January 1in the U.K., taking £572,893 on that single date, according to Screen Daily. It is now at the top of the awards season, with 12 nominations for the BAFTAs, and four nominations and one win for Olivia Colman at the Golden Globes.

The Favourite is based on the story of a real English Queen in the early 18th century. Screenwriter Deborah Davis developed a screenplay after reading about Queen Anne’s affair with Lady Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough, in a newspaper article twenty years ago. Searching through the correspondence between the Queen and Sarah and the memoir of the Duchess, she discovered how Sarah lost her favor in the eyes of the Queen with the arrival of Abigail. Davis saw in this a perfect story to explore the role of women in power. The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos was chosen to direct, and another screenwriter, Tony McNamara, was brought in to refine the original screenplay by Deborah Davis.

The film portrays the relationship between Queen Anne, played by Olivia Colman, and Lady Sarah, played by Rachel Weisz, as a manipulative one in which Sarah is pulling all the strings, and ostensibly running the country in place of Anne. Their relationship is turned upside down by the arrival of Sarah’s cousin Abigail, played by Emma Stone. Upon discovering the Queen and Sarah’s love affair, Abigail pulls every trick she can to seduce the Queen and get rid of Lady Sarah. The film shows how the motives behind Sarah and Abigail is not only to gain power but is also political. In effect, both Sarah and Abigail represent opposing members of parliament.

The film is anchored by the brilliant performances from the three leading actresses that form this female triangle. Olivia Colman as Queen Anne plays a capricious and childlike queen, suffering from gout, who decides on the future of her country according to who shares her bed. Rachel Weisz is manipulative and caring, as Sarah, in her attention to the queen while openly cruel to her at times, claiming that she is the one who can dare to be honest to her. She is slowly eclipsed by the cunning Abigail. Emma Stone plays brilliantly the duality of her character who is both sweet and malicious, in order to climb the social ladder.

Much like Lanthimos’ previous films, Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, the world depicted in The Favourite is an insular one which feels constrained and claustrophobic. Lanthimos here creates again an environment that is unpleasant and off-kilter. This is accentuated by the wide-angled shots that distort the image to the point of absurdity. The exquisite costumes and the set designs contrast with the modernist, and at times foul, way the characters address each other.

The novelty of the film, however, fades after a while. The film is flamboyant in its setting, the costumes, the way its characters speak, the use of the wide-angle and fish-eye lens, the throwing of fruits at a naked man in slow motion, but it is not enough to sustain it. You slowly become weary of it, wondering when the film will end. The film does not go further than its premise, it does not exceed what it had set out to do. It subverts the period drama genre, or rather it takes a look at period dramas from a different perspective, but it does not go beyond that. With all this said, however, it achieves this subversion brilliantly, making this a thoroughly entertaining film.